Nubank Helps Digital Lender Tyme Reach $1.5 Billion Valuation

South Africa-based digital bank Tyme has achieved unicorn status with the help of fellow FinTech Nubank.

The company announced Tuesday (Dec. 17) that it had raised $250 million in a Series D funding round, bringing its value to $1.5 billion. Among Tyme’s investors is Nubank, a 110-million-member digital lender based in Brazil.

Tyme, whose TymeBank has more than 15 million customers across South Africa and the Philippines, says its partnership with Nubank gives it the expertise and resources to expand its market presence.

“Nubank transformed financial services in Brazil,” Coen Jonker, founder and CEO of Tyme Group, said in a news release.

“We are excited by the value that Nubank’s thought partnership and advice can bring to Tyme particularly in areas such as data analytics, credit risk management, product development and marketing — levers we believe are key to achieving leadership in our markets. This is a moment of great significance for Tyme.”

Nubank founder and CEO David Vélez said the investment is part of his company’s belief that digitally native companies are the future of financial services.

“We have met dozens of teams across different geographies, and we think that Tyme Group is extremely well-positioned to be a digital bank leader in Africa and Southeast Asia,” Vélez said in the announcement. “We are excited to work with Tyme to share many of our learnings of scaling this model to hundreds of millions of customers.”

The $250 million raised in this round is well above the $150 million the company had been targeting when it announced the Series D earlier this year. Jonker said at the time that Tyme hoped to go public in the U.S by 2028, with a secondary listing on the Johannesburg market.

Tyme raised $77 million last year in a round aimed at expanding its presence in South Africa and the Philippines.

Meanwhile, PYMNTS wrote recently about the challenges facing so-called “challenger banks,” which have enjoyed a wave of funding this year.

“There are some indications, however, that challengers are still fine-tuning at least some aspects of their business models as growth remains heady,” that report said. “Fraud and anti-money laundering (AML) concerns are inviting increased regulatory scrutiny, especially in the U.K.”

Two of that country’s upstart banks — Starling Bank and Metro Bank — were fined several million pounds this year over their AML/financial crime control failings.

Research from the PYMNTS Intelligence report “Digital Banking: The Brewing Battle for Where We Will Bank” shows that 25% of consumers say data security is one of the chief reasons they have not pivoted to digital-only banking services.